Slytherin Vengeance: Heaven Burns
by Metallicafangirl
Summary: Book 3 of 3. Post-OotP. The summer winds down and school stars up again, and Blaise has to re-acclimatise himself to being around his friends. Lies will break, new alliances will be formed. The Second War has begun in earnest.
1. Growing Up

There was a mirror in my room.  
  
It was not, however, the presence of the mirror that disturbed me. It was what it reflected. A year ago, I would have seen a tired, sickly face, dark rings under eyes that had seen too little sleep and too much tragedy. Six months ago, I would have seen a content, if nervous gaze returned to me. Too much alcohol and too little Christmas cheer mixing in a face with nearly-fresh scars. None of what I would have seen would have prepared me for what I saw staring back at me the morning I was to leave for Diagon Alley to buy school books.  
  
What I saw was a face that was not old, no, that was not a suitable word, but perhaps tried was the right way to describe it. And out of my mismatched eyes came a look more knowing than I had even thought I could accomplish: it was a look I could sometimes see in Vincent's eyes, in Frederic's when he talked about his parents, in Snape's eyes when he had looked at us Slytherins over the years. I had never expected to see it mirrored in my own eyes.  
  
At some point during the summer, without my knowledge, I had grown up.  
  
Merlin knew I felt older, but I had never expected to see it so clearly in my own face. Gone was the juvenile sullenness, replaced with a blank seriousness most often found in Vincent Lucas. Emotional detachedness was something I was still working on, but it seemed that I, at least, had the facial expression mastered. Breaking it with a decidedly adolescent grin, I picked up the book list and headed out of the room. It was time to leave for Diagon Alley, and if Frederic found out I'd been spending – I checked the grandfather-clock in the hall – ten minutes looking at myself in the mirror, I'd never hear the end of it.  
  
Today, I was supposed to Floo to Diagon Alley, buy my school-books, perhaps spend some time at Fortesque's, and then return straight back to Vincent and report. It felt strange, knowing that I had spent nearly two months with the crazy Lucas brothers, training myself to be safe to be around. That was nearly two months of my life that had flown by in what seemed like moments. My childhood was slipping away, but like old men kept knick-knacks on their bookshelves to remind themselves of what had happened to them, I would hold onto it for as long as I was allowed.  
  
But in a time of war, small space was made for such allowances.  
  
"Be careful," Vincent told me seriously as I prepared to leave.  
  
"It's hardly as if the Death Eaters would dare to attack Diagon Alley in broad daylight," I said, taking a pinch of Floo-powder from the old tin on the mantle.  
  
"You never know," he said, shaking his head. "You never know."  
  
"Are you going to shout constant vigilance at me, just like Mad-Eye did?" I wondered, half-joking.  
  
"If that's what it takes." The expression on his face was approaching frightening.  
  
"I'll be fine," I sighed. "It isn't as if the Diagon Alley people can spring anything on me that you two haven't. And if I see a Death Eater, I promise I'll sneak off in the opposite direction. Can I go now?"  
  
He nodded tersely, and left the room. Breathing in slowly through my nose, annoyed at his over-careful attitude, I threw the powder in the fireplace, announcing my destination. Normally, the fireplace was barren and cold, but in honour of my little excursion, Frederic had lit it, laughing like a child all the while. At times, he seemed almost schizophrenic, one minute as easily amused and distracted as a child, the next giving advice on how best to kill someone using nothing but your hands.  
  
For the last week, I had been suffering from what the Muggleborns called cabin-fever. I had been pacing the floor like a caged wolf, not concentrating on my studies not out of disinterest, but because I couldn't. Restlessly I would prowl the hallways at night, staring at the moon, wondering if even Remus Lupin had ever studied it as much as I did. As I paced, I tried my hardest not to think about Hermione Granger, but it was nigh impossible.  
  
Somehow, she sneaked her way into my thoughts no matter what I did. I didn't love her, there was no conceivable way I could: I didn't know her, and if I got my way I never would, and this silly idea would burn out by itself. Pretended ignorance was sometimes the only thing between me and the freedom of lunacy. Slytherins did not fancy Gryffindors. Snakes do not mix with lionesses. Those two phrases became my mantra those nights, running over and over in my head, repeating themselves until I could finally find some peace again.  
  
Unfortunately, my feelings would not bow down to cold reason. They found a way to creep in, into dreams, into thoughts, into the waking hours. In the cold, grey light of dawn, I could find myself wondering if she was still sleeping, or if she was being the stubborn Gryffindor she always was and studying all night long. Neither option would particularly surprise me, had I been informed. And when I thought about her, my cabin-fever grew worse.  
  
Finally, Vincent had snapped at me to either stop pacing or go and distract myself. The first thing that had come to mind was going to Diagon Alley and buying my school-books. It was only due to my frantic pacing, I was convinced, that Vincent let me go. Otherwise, he would have kept me for far longer than my sanity would have held. I emerged into the sun of Diagon Alley more satisfied with the sights that most first-years were upon their first visit. My first stop would have to be Flourish & Blott's, since books were the main reason I was there, though I might need to get my wand checked out by Ollivander. It was starting to act strangely when I used it.  
  
Flourish & Blott's was exactly like I remembered it. Of course, book-shops don't often change over the space of two months, but one might hope. I checked over my list again, before looking at the nearly empty bookshelves. It seemed the Hogwarts' booklist had arrived early this year. Or perhaps it was just I who was late out. Wandering through the shop, I hunted for the Transfiguration, Charms and Arithmancy books I needed.  
  
I found them at the back of the shop, brought them to the cashier and paid for them. He looked at me strangely when I put the books on the counter, and seemed to count them twice, just to make sure there were three of them.  
  
"You starting seventh year?" He asked sceptically.  
  
"Yes." I said.  
  
"Ain't you a bit too old for that?"  
  
"I'm seventeen, eighteen later this year," I informed him, successfully keeping a straight face. It was amazing what a couple of weeks with legally insane brothers could do for your appearance. It made you look older than you were, for one.  
  
"Then shouldn't you have Compendium of Curses too?" He asked, looking a bit dubious at the information that I was only sixteen.  
  
"I've already read it cover to cover," I said, trying to look sincere, while cracking up on the inside.  
  
And I had: in the hours of lost sleep, I'd finished the rather heavy book. It had seemed to be the only thing capable of making me sit down and stop pacing so frantically. The books I'd bought weren't particularly heavy, I noticed as I walked outside. In fact, they were the lightest course-books we'd ever had. With the exception of the Compendium, they were all less than one hundred pages. It was a rather odd occurrence for Hogwarts, since even our first-year books had been at least one hundred and fifty pages long.  
  
Perhaps there wasn't much left for us to learn, or perhaps they'd changed the curriculum, since I could clearly remember Gaspar having to carry around books so heavy he was bent double in the effort. The only person who hadn't lightened our burden was Vincent, since the Compendium was packed full of curses just within the borders of legality. Perhaps he was right in doing so, since there was a war just outside the castle's walls, and we would most likely be in the middle of it.  
  
I wandered down the street to Ollivander's and ducked inside. That place hadn't changed either, but it was different from Flourish & Blott's: Ollivander's had no right not to have changed. It had been nearly seven years since I was there last, but the dark little shop with the dusty pillow in the window hadn't changed one bit. Some scared little eleven-year- old was sitting awkwardly on a chair, waiting for Mr Ollivander to make an appearance. Leaning against a wall, observing the boy and his parents, I waited as well.  
  
It occurred to me that Marise would be getting her wand this year, and starting school as well. Hopefully, she'd get to go to Hogwarts, since that's what our father had said when he laid down the law just before I went to school. He'd said, "No child of mine will have to suffer Beuxbaton's when they can go to Hogwarts," or something along those lines. I'd been a scared eleven year old, so I couldn't remember it very clearly. But meant, if Mother still had enough braincells to remember, that my sister would be coming to Hogwarts with me this year. Which meant complications.  
  
Ollivander stepped out in the shop, followed by a young man with a vague resemblance to him, but who mostly looked like a cross between a poached egg and some watered-down mercury. I could hardly keep myself from snorting out loud at his appearance. He turned to look at me, and attempted a glare, of which he failed spectacularly. I raised my eyebrow and looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something, but he didn't.  
  
"Rowan, will you please help the young man over there," Ollivander gestured towards me, "The picking of wands is best left to me, I believe."  
  
Great, I rolled my eyes, I was left to deal with the weakling relative of Ollivander, when I actually needed Ollivander's help. Haywire wands wasn't something to be left to inexperienced boys who had yet to wipe their nose on their own.  
  
"What can I help you with?" Rowan asked me, unable to keep the contempt out of his voice.  
  
"I need someone to do a check on my wand: it's been acting strangely since July." I said, shrugging it out of its wrist-sheath. "I tried casting a Burning Hex, and it misfired, setting fire to a tree instead of my intended target."  
  
"I'll look over it," he said, sounding frighteningly like a bleating sheep. "Can you come back tomorrow?"  
  
"Hell no I can't!" I snapped, annoyed with his appearance, his manner of speaking and his attitude. "I need my wand today, and I can't come back tomorrow, since I live about half a country away from here with only sporadic Floo-connections."  
  
"This will take some time," he tried, looking shocked at my outburst.  
  
"I have all day: I can wait." I said, deliberately making my point obvious by leaning against the wall again. "You just look over my wand: I'll catch up on my sleep."  
  
He sputtered for a moment, but I pretended to fall asleep standing up. From behind my fringe, which was as always in bad need of a haircut, I observed the little boy searching for his wand. He was proving to be a difficult customer, and he was getting steadily more desperate, just as Ollivander got happier at being allowed an excuse to go through all his wands. When he finally found the right wand, (ten inch yew with dragon heart-string, good for Transfiguration) he was close to tears with happiness.  
  
And I still hadn't gotten my wand back.  
  
An hour in the stuffy shop, and Rowan something-or-the-other still had my wand. He made a show of looking over it every now and then, but in between he would just stare blankly at a wall. My fingers itched, wanting to take back my wand. I wasn't at all comfortable with leaving it, even to someone obviously working at Ollivander's, but it appeared I had no choice. When finally finished stacking away all the wands again, Ollivander turned to me, smiling in the creepy way he had done in my first year when I came to buy my wand.  
  
"Still here?" He asked. "Do you have a particularly complicated problem with your wand?"  
  
"I wouldn't know," I shrugged. "I haven't got it back yet."  
  
"You haven't?" He seemed surprised. "Rowan? What are you up to?"  
  
He wandered off towards his relative, or at least I assumed they were related. Guiltily, Rowan snapped to attention like a nervous soldier who had just spotted his psychotic drill-sergeant coming towards him. He dropped my wand on the counter, his hands were shaking so bad. I couldn't blame him really: Ollivander was freaky enough when he wasn't annoyed with you. A brief, quiet argument I didn't catch much of later, I had my wand in my hand, and was being told there was nothing wrong with it. It was, in fact, in perfect condition for a seven year old wand.  
  
"Well, then I am the root of the problem," I brushed off their curious stares, "I just wanted to get that confirmed. Thank you for your time."  
  
Sometimes, it paid to be polite: Ollivander and his useless relative let me go without further questions, though he looked a little suspicious. Once more stepping outside the tiny shop, I found myself in a much busier street than I had left an hour ago: during my wait in Ollivander's, the people of Diagon Alley had woken up and started about their business of the day. There were a few first-years-to-be in the crowds, and I bumped into someone who was obviously a Muggle, holding onto the hand of someone who had the air of a scared Muggleborn. After apologising shortly and pointing them towards Flourish & Blott's, I headed to the Leaky Cauldron.  
  
When I'd left some six weeks ago, I couldn't remember whether or not I told them I wouldn't come back. If I hadn't, it was time to apologise, and perhaps tell them they could keep their money. The Leaky Cauldron was a cosy place, and I might as well stop by there and eat my lunch. Unfortunately, it was at the other end of the street, and would take some time getting to. Muttering about how I despised crowds, I bundled of the bag I kept the books in and stuffed it in an inner pocket of my cloak/robe- hybrid.  
  
Some of the residents of Diagon Alley hung in the second-story windows, pointing at the crowd and talking to each other. Someone threw a parcel down at someone standing in the street. It narrowly avoided bouncing off my head, and I glared up at the man who had thrown it. He merely waved cheerfully at me and closed the window, and the man who now held the parcel stalked off down the street in the direction of Ollivander's holding onto the parcel as if it was made of gold.  
  
Dodging a group of witches giggling over something or the other, I finally reached Fortesque's. That was about half-way to the Leaky Cauldron. Looking at the crowd in doubt, I stopped just outside the ice-cream parlour, weighing the pro's and con's of actually fighting my way there. While the crowd wasn't any larger than it usually was, it was much more spirited and seemed to have a habit of running into itself every now and then. Ice-cream seemed a perfectly viable option, if not all that nutritious, when seen in light of those facts.  
  
Making up my mind that ice-cream would be the main-course of my lunch of the day, I turned and walked into Fortesque's. For most people, it was too early to eat, even if they had the choice of ice-cream, so there was still space enough to spare in the ice-cream parlour. I placed my order and made myself comfortable at one of the tables, watching people go by on the street outside. As always, I was hungry, and as soon as the ice-cream was put on the table in front of me, I tucked in quite happily. Once more, I'd ordered chocolate and lemon, and once more, the waiter looked strangely at me. I ignored her. Let her look: chocolate and lemon ice-cream was nothing to the strangeness in my head.  
  
Despite the variety of people in the crowd outside, I had yet to spot anyone I recognised from Hogwarts. There were a few excited or even scared eleven-year-olds, about to become first-years, but there wasn't any other students that I had seen. Not even anonymous Hufflepuffs. It seemed to be mostly people living in Diagon Alley, shop-owners or otherwise, and random strangers. Which was was strange, since most people should be here, getting their school books. Everyone couldn't go shopping the same day: three hundred students, as well as all other street-life did not fit into Diagon Alley at the same time.  
  
For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of red hair and the face of that redhead I had thought was a veela, but as soon as I spotted her, she disappeared again, so it might as well have been my imagination. I shook it off, finished my ice-cream, and kept watching the people. I didn't need to get back just yet, since Vincent had muttered something about having a ´discussion´ with his brother, and I didn't want to end up in the middle of that. The waiter came by again, preparing to ask if I wanted anything else, but I waved her off absently.  
  
People-watching was a cheap hobby, and not entirely pointless. One learns a lot by watching others. If nothing else, one learns about oneself when one watches others: sometimes, I was sure I wouldn't even know I was more than half-way to insane if I didn't have other people to watch. They were all so blessedly normal in comparison to me: they were neat, calm, happy, never had to think about looking over their shoulder in case someone tried to attack them with a pair of glasses.  
  
As I watched, the crowd thinned out somewhat. Now I could see to the other side of the street without trouble, though there were still a lot of people walking around in the sunshine. There was mostly pre-first years and their parents, as well as some people who might have been Hogwarts students and who might not: I didn't recognise them, but they seemed about the right age to be in some of the higher years. They laughed, ate ice-cream and chattered happily, making the scene look every inch a summer paradise.  
  
I envied them.  
  
While the shadow of war marked everyone these days, none of them were as aware as I and perhaps Potter and his friends were. They didn't have their fathers in Azkaban like Draco had. They weren't locked up all summer by the grandparents because they might turn out like their parents, like Agnes was. They didn't sleep in a tree-house in the summers because they were afraid of what their fathers might do, like Theo was.  
  
They didn't know fear like I did.  
  
And when the time came, they would be paying for it in blood. Fear, whatever else it did, prepared for the unexpected. If you feared werewolves coming out of the walls, you wouldn't be surprised when they did. If you feared that around the next corner would be a smiling Lucius Malfoy, then you wouldn't be surprised when he turned up with his wand levelled at you. Fear was just as powerful a shield as the one I'd built by magic around myself.  
  
The shield was tricky business: the making of it consisted of imagining an invisible layer between myself and the rest of the world, a layer which let sunlight, air and sound through but kept out physical things such as thrown rocks. Maintaining it was a different matter altogether: when thinking about it, it was difficult to keep it up more than ten minutes at the time, but when I let it become a unconscious reaction, when the only thing I consciously did was let it slip away, that was when I could keep it up for hours. It drained me, magically, little by little, and after about twelve hours I couldn't keep it up even if I wanted to. It didn't stop everything completely, except perhaps hexes and curses, but it slowed them down long enough for me to step out of the way.  
  
And, I had discovered, it made me aware of someone who touched it, even if I wasn't looking. I had never attempted to push it further than about a feet from my body, but I had a suspicion that if I did, I would feel people inside of it. The risk of losing control by pushing too far, too soon kept me from trying. Bloody chaos wasn't exactly what I had in mind for my seventh year at Hogwarts.  
  
I put money for the ice-cream on the table and wandered out of Fortesque's again, standing outside for a moment, looking at the crowd. A smile appeared on my face, and I retreated to the shadow cast by one of the rickety buildings. I leaned against the sun-warmed bricks and watched the people wandering by, in the manner of people in summer everywhere. Hidden in the shadows, no one could see me, which was just the way I wanted it.  
  
'''''''''''''  
  
Ending Notes: And there arrives the first chapter of Slytherin Vengeance 3. The last part of the trilogy. Well, I hope you'll like it, since most of the plot will have to be solved in it. There will however, on the insistence of O&U pirates (you know who you are), be another novel-length set in the same universe.   
  
Note on Blaise's age: I've stated in part one that he was born on New Year's Eve, and is in fact a year older than the rest of his schoolmates, therefore he gave his age as almost eighteen at Flourish&Blotts.   



	2. To Burn

I forgot to put in the disclaimer in the last chapter, so I am putting it here.   
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and associated characters, they belong to JK Rowling and Warner Bros., and I am making no money from this story.   
  
''''''''''  
  
Three things happened quite suddenly while I stood there in the shadows with my back against the brick wall. First, I spotted someone I recognised in the crowd; Hermione appeared, walking beside a woman I assumed to be her mother, and laughing, passing quite close to me and stopping across the street. Second, the headache I'd suffered throughout the first half of sixth year returned with vengeance, so strong it almost blinded me for a moment. Third, there was a sickly red light at the other end of the street.  
  
Then, all hell broke loose.  
  
Someone screamed, a scream of pain and fear, and I slammed up my shield quicker than I had ever done before. The world slowed down to a snail's pace, and I could see Hermione spin around, shove her mother behind her and pull out her wand, all in the same motion. I was half-way across the street before I realised my legs were moving. Shouted curses erupted in red, blue and white light around me, a sick stroboscope of magic, throwing people aside like discarded dolls. A zigzagging jet of red light hit the wall of Flourish & Blott's, just above Hermione and her mother.  
  
The building stones fell like rain, and I could do nothing but watch as they descended on the people of the street. Through some miracle, they avoided Hermione and her mother, who were closest to the building, and gave what looked like minor wounds to the rest: the largest stones didn't fly far, and thumped down on the pavement to heavily that I could feel the street vibrate beneath my feet. The woodwork over the doorway of Fortesque's ignited into roaring flames with one word from a dark-clad man. I could hear the screams from inside the ice-cream parlour, and over the roaring of the fire, the enraged curses of Florean Fortesque himself.  
  
Someone slammed into me, taking me by surprise and sending me sprawling to the ground. I barely had time to brace myself to keep my face from hitting the pavement. Pushing myself up again with some difficulty, I got to my feet and tried to see what the hell had happened. My eyes widened as they lightened on the Leaky Cauldron, reduced to burning rubble. On top of the brick wall that had once been the entrance to Diagon Alley, stood an all too familiar red-headed woman, wand held high and laughing wildly.  
  
My attention was brought back to myself and the people around me as a child, no more than eleven, crashed into me trying to escape from a man in a black robe. With a wand pointed at me, my world narrowed down and a subconscious personality, bred and perfected through weeks with the Lucas' brothers, took over. A quick shake of my wrist left me with my wand in my hand and magic burning just underneath my skin, ready to be used.  
  
"Termino Inhalo," I said, a lot more calmly than I felt.  
  
The man began to choke, unable to breathe out. It was one of the curses I'd found in the Compendium, which would disappear as soon as he passed out. The little boy who had crashed into me was sitting on the ground, screaming for his father to find him, but I didn't have time to help him. The single coherent thought still in my head was to get over the street and find Hermione.  
  
People were never more like a herd of sheep as when they were under attack: they milled about screaming, while only a few had actually taken up their wands and countered the attack. Pushing through the panicked crowd, I fought to get to the ruins of Flourish and Blott's. Bewildered shoppers who didn't know what had happened or what to do hurried out of my way like frightened animals, and with some difficulty I arrived at the burning ruins, out of breath and with a firmer hold on my warded shield than before, more angry than afraid.  
  
Through the fire and the fallen building stones, I managed to find her, fighting one of the black-clad attackers. They had to be Death Eaters, it was the only explanation I could think of for them to attack innocent people like they did. Affirmation arrived as Hermione blasted off the man's sleeve with a well-placed curse. She fought like a cornered lioness, snarling and baring her teeth even as the felines did, fighting with the ferociousness of a mother protecting her cubs. Curses and hexes I hadn't expected even a member of Potter's prestigious little club to know blasted forth from her wand, not disabling or killing the Death Eater, but keeping him busy enough not to reach her.  
  
But this was no time for idle contemplation. Pulling up some of the tricks Frederic had taught me from the recesses of my memory, I approached the Death Eater from behind, even as he gained a little on Hermione. I was almost there, almost had my hands around his neck, when an arm as slung around my shoulders and I was dragged backwards. Cursing myself for standing still for as long as I had, I didn't hesitate a moment before I brought my wand up over my shoulder and stabbed backwards as hard as I could.  
  
I must have scored a hit, because the arm that was holding me stiffened and convulsed, then let go as suddenly as it had appeared. Whatever screaming or shouting the arm's owner had made were lost in the sounds of the fires burning in most of the buildings along the Alley, and the din made by the crowd and its attackers. Not bothering to turn around and check if my desperate attack had been successful, I lunged forward, gripping the Death Eater's hair with one hand and jerking his head back and at the same time bringing my knee up to connect sharply with his spine. I needn't have bothered, since as he went down I had to duck out of the way of a nasty hex, courtesy of Hermione.  
  
She lowered her wand when she saw it wasn't just another Death Eater, giving me time to take in the scene in front of me. Hermione, her cheek grazed and trickling blood, and her robes torn beyond recognition, stood with wand in hand, facing the open Alley. Her mother was sprawled on the heap of building stones that had until twenty minutes previously made up the outer wall of Flourish&Blott's, looking frightened out of her wits. Poor woman: a trip to Diagon Alley had come with a full-scale Death Eater attack.  
  
"Are you alright?" I asked, a bit redundantly.  
  
"I'll live," she said shortly.  
  
"Any idea how it started?" I asked, holding out my hand to help her mother up, at the same time looking around behind me.  
  
The fallen wall had made a small hiding-spot between the shop and the street, open in the direction of Gringotts. The rubble-piles were easily high enough to hide us, if I stood in a bit of a crouch. We were as safe as anyone could be in this pandemonium, and with a bit of luck, they wouldn't even know we were there until it was too late.  
  
"No," she shook her head, helping her mother stand as well, "But I know where: over at the leaky Cauldron. That's where the first spell was fired."  
  
"We need to get everyone out and call the Aurors," I said, thinking aloud, peering over the top of the stones down the street, looking for any sign of that redhead. "Where's the closest Floo-connection we can easily reach?"  
  
"Gringotts," was the answer I got, as Hermione took over the helping of her mother. "They've got Floo-connections behind the counters."  
  
My attention was divided between the chaos of the street and keeping myself from breaking down and kissing her out of sheer relief that she was alive. Kisses and spontaneous professions of adoration would have to be kept for later, if I ever got around to it. The more pressing issue of getting out of Diagon Alley alive and unscathed took first seat to my repressed emotions. While listening with half an ear to Hermione trying to calm her mother down, I measured the distance between where we were and the doors of Gringotts. There were a good number of people between us, engaged in fighting or merely cowering in corners, but the goblins had come out of the bank and were defending it. Against goblin-magic, ordinary wizards were nearly useless, so the path inside was still clear.  
  
Calculating the number of Death Eaters against the number of defenders still in possession of their wands, I realised no one would get out unless a good portion of the attackers were distracted by something.  
  
Or someone.  
  
It was a risky and foolish plan, to the point of being Gryffindor in its quality, but it was the only one I had at my disposal, and I had advantages most people didn't. Closing my eyes and praying whatever deity that cared to be forgiven for breaking the conventions of my House, I turned to Hermione to tell her of my plan, since she had an instrumental part in it. I found she was speaking quickly to her mother in a hushed voice, who was looking from me to the street and back again, white as parchment.  
  
"I think I know how to pull this off," I announced as quietly as I could, while still being heard over the din.  
  
"I hope to hell it's a good plan, because we'll only get one chance," Hermione said, looking grim. "Those Death Eaters might have used simple curses to start off with, but they've got us cornered now, and they've never known how to spell mercy."  
  
"Time they learn how to spell then," I mumbled, once more distracted by a hasty movement not far away.  
  
"What's the plan?"  
  
"Get to Gringotts with your mother, tell the goblins to evacuate everyone they can, and go in after them." I spoke quickly, clutching my wand so tightly my knuckles were turning white. "As soon as people start arriving through the Floo bleeding and sooty, the distress call will go up and the Aurors will Apparate here, unless someone's already alerted them. Either way, go through the Floo after the others: the goblins will be fine on their own."  
  
"And what are you going to do?" she asked suspiciously.  
  
"I'm going to give them something to aim at," I smiled, a smile devoid of any happiness.  
  
Her widened as she realised what I had in mind, and was just opening her mouth to protest that I was being stupid when I pushed her out of our hiding-place and towards Gringotts, spinning on my heels and firing hexes at the Death Eaters, trying to cover their retreat. I heard shouting behind me, and the scraping of stone on stone that signalled another falling wall, but I was much too concentrated on the Death Eaters to pay attention.  
  
Once more, I slipped into the focused, cold state of mind and my world narrowed to the mind-mouth-hand coordination needed to fire spell after spell, hex after hex at the Death Eaters. There weren't as many of them as I'd first thought: perhaps they'd thought Diagon Alley would be easy to take in broad daylight, but they weren't the students I'd duelled at school. These were grown, hardened Death Eaters, servants of Voldemort, who had either escaped arrest by being exceptionally cunning, or spent the last fifteen years in Azkaban, and had lost all their inhibitions about killing without mercy.  
  
There were people next to me, the ones who were still in possession of their wands, and they were fighting with the same grim determination that I was. I didn't have time to look at their faces, but on one side of me was someone in a patched, green robe, with scars on his hands, while on the other side someone wearing the glittering family rings of ancient Purebloods, dressed in the latest fashion in robes. The Death Eaters, their blank masks hiding their expressions, still managed to seem surprised at the resistance they met.  
  
They parted and let someone through. At first, I couldn't see who it was because of the smoke and odd lights cast by the fires, but I could see that she wasn't wearing a mask, or even a regular Death Eater's robe. I caught a flash of red hair as the smoke cleared for a moment, and a chilling realisation gripped me, running down my spine like ice. It was the veela- like woman who had been standing on the ruins of the Cauldron, laughing in madness at the chaos. My mind went from ice-cold defence to white-hot rage in a matter of seconds, realising with utter certainty that she was the one to start this attack, and without thinking I let my magic out stronger than I had previously.  
  
A thin line of fire appeared before her feet, running from one side of the street to the other, but the fire was green. The flames, edged with the deep emerald colour of the Slytherin banner, whipped up as if in the middle of a storm, when there was no wind to feed them, and soon burned as high as my chest, barring the way between the Death Eaters and Gringotts. At first, the notion of burning the Death Eater's themselves had presented itself neatly to my mind, but I pulled back at the last second and decided to just hinder them instead.  
  
"Run," I told my fellow defenders, never looking away from my line of fire. "Save yourselves: get the other people and run."  
  
But they didn't: the wands did not waver, the hands did not shake, and I knew it would be pointless to ask them again. From the other side of the green flames, the red-headed woman smiled at me, a twisted smile, so demented it frightened me. Whatever pleasure she could find in burning innocent people just because they were there was lost on me, and I stared back as blankly as I could, raising the flames just a little higher. At times like these, I didn't have a conscious control over my magic: it seemed I just instinctively knew what to do, and it happened. It wasn't until afterwards I realised I'd chosen the most effective way to do what I needed without thinking.  
  
Over the roaring of fire, magic-fed and otherwise, I couldn't hear what the woman said, but she gave me one last, lethal smile and Disapparated with a sharp popping sound. The rest of the Death Eaters hurried to follow her, leaving the street barren and burning behind them. I extinguished the green flames as quickly as I had ignited them, feeling light-headed and slightly nauseous. A hand caught hold of my elbow, steadying me, and I whispered a quiet thank-you, though it was doubtful it was heard over the crackling fires. I turned away from the street, walking on shaking legs to the stairs of Gringotts.  
  
There, on the last step, Hermione was waiting for me, sitting with her wand still in her hand. Some time during the attack, she'd gotten soot streaked across her forehead, and she was clutching at her left shoulder with a grimace of pain. Not bothering to put on the practised blank face, I sunk down wearily next to her, putting my wand back in its wrist-sheath and massaging my fingers, fingers that felt as if I'd just stuck them in a fire. I could feel the blisters forming, and tried my best to straighten out stiff joints before it became unbearable.  
  
"You're not supposed to be here." I told her quietly.  
  
"Neither were the Death Eaters, but that didn't stop them, did it?" she answered dully. "Mum is not going to let me out of the house for the rest of the holidays."  
  
"You're going to St. Mungo's in any case." I shrugged awkwardly. "We all are."  
  
"Why? I'm not hurt." she protested.  
  
"You've been inhaling smoke: you of all people, being as bleeding intelligent as you are, should know that's bad," I sighed, taking the first reason I could come up with.  
  
She nodded without a word, and seemed to sag a bit, as if all her energy dissipated when I finished speaking. Not even realising what I was doing, I unclasped my cloak and threw it over her shoulders, staring blankly down the street, searching for something to set my eyes on. Picking their way through the demolished remains of the Leaky Cauldron, Aurors were finally starting to arrive, in company of green-clad Healers and a pair that looked suspiciously like Anja and Basil. There was no mistaking the electric blue scarf Basil had chosen to add to the sombre Unspeakable uniform.  
  
One arm across Hermione's shoulder under the forgotten pretence to be giving her my cloak, I watched them walk down the street towards us and the few other stragglers. One of the people around Gringotts I recognised: the man Vincent had visited the day he came to pick me up from Diagon Alley six weeks ago, the one I'd thought was a Muggle at first glance. He was kicking at a pile of rubble, his wand still in his hand. Another stately looking wizard, with signet rings on his hands and a long, dark cloak, was glaring down the street towards the approaching Aurors. He was fairly vibrating with anger, though I was too exhausted to figure out why, or even form a coherent thought any more.  
  
The head of the Auror squad, a brown-haired man with a thick moustache, cleared his throat as they finally arrived at the stairs of Gringotts. Most of the rest of the squad were scouting the permitier of the destroyed Diagon Alley, looking for survivors and left-over Death Eaters. Anja spotted me, and her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline, but she kept her peace as the head-Auror spoke to the man in the dark robe.  
  
"Uaithne Caractacus," the Auror said, sounding as if he wanted to sneer but didn't dare to, "I should have known I'd find you at the root of the trouble."  
  
"The Death Eaters were the root of the trouble," the man addressed as Uaithne snapped angrily, "I live just down the street: I couldn't leave them to their own devices!"  
  
"The Death Eaters? Why should a disbanded group of servants attack Diagon Alley? Their master is gone," the Auror told him, though he was no acting superior.  
  
"Don't be silly, O'Connor," Anja said, tapping him in the small of his back with her wand, "Voldemort's back; you might as well admit it. Caractacus, why are those two children here?"  
  
It was a clever way to distract an impending squabble, as well as finding out what I was doing in the smoking ruins of Diagon Alley when I should be at home. I would have admired her cleverness, but my brain wasn't working like it should. Sounds, broken up pieces of conversations filtered through, but none of it made sense. All that still made sense was that I was alive, that Hermione was alive and that we were going to stay that way. And my head hurt. It was throbbing in time with my heartbeats.  
  
"That young man is the reason why the Death Eaters didn't run roughshod over all of us," Uaithne snapped, every inch a Pureblood patriarch. "That line of fire was a brilliant idea, boy: without it, I don't know what we would have done."  
  
"Thank you sir," I said, my throat so dry that my voice cracked. "It was a split-second of inspiration. It could have happened to anyone."  
  
"You don't sound too well," Basil remarked, looking up from where he was rummaging around in one of the piles, "Let one of the Healers take you and everyone else to St. Mungo's."  
  
"There's no one else." Hermione piped up, looking up from her lap.  
  
"What?"  
  
"There's no one else: they all got out during the fire." she repeated. "Unless there's someone injured closer to the Cauldron, we're the only one's left."  
  
There wasn't much I remembered clearly after that: the few things that I remember stand out clearly in my mind, like beacons in the darkness, but they were all disconnected and out of sequence. The surprised and slightly admiring looks on the faces of the Aurors and Anja, Basil wandering away, shouting enquiries about injured people, someone in a Healer's green robes asking me to breathe slowly, the sickly yellow walls of St. Mungo's, and the chill of fresh linen in a hospital bed. The welcome darkness of sleep and the dreams that followed.  
  
They were confusing, the dreams: a jumble of burning buildings, smoking ruins and flashes of red hair. Above the crackling of fire, the sound of a demented laughter echoing in my ears, and a beautiful face smiling at me before disappearing. Repeated over and over, I saw the wall of Flourish&Blott's explode in a shower of stones, shattering and raining down on the crowd below. Screams that rang in my ears, shouted curses, jets of red light and screams sharply ending, the sickening green light of the Killing Curse, lighting up the other end of a dark street.  
  
The flickering flames of a green fire, burning right before my eyes.  
  
I jerked awake, bathing in cold sweat and with a racing heart, breathing as if I'd just run a marathon. At first, I didn't recognised the room, bathed in moonlight like it was, but then my mind made the connections and I remembered I was in St. Mungo's. I sat up in the thin bed, pulling the blanket up with me, staring around the room dazedly. I still had my clothes, the trousers and the shirt I'd dressed in that morning, and my cloak was thrown over a chair nearby, my wand and wrist-sheath on the bedside table.  
  
Yet it felt as if something was missing.  
  
I ran down my mental check-list again but my sleep-slow mind couldn't find anything missing. Even my books, which I'd thought I'd dropped when the Death Eaters came, was on the bedside table, a bit worse for wear but whole. Only after the third time or so, I got the feeling that it wasn't something, but someone missing. Someone I clearly could remember holding onto on the way to the hospital. Another two times and I arrived at the conclusion that it must be Hermione I was missing, remembering how close she'd been to me on the steps of Gringotts, shivering despite the cloak I'd loaned her.  
  
There was a clock at the bedside table, which told the world it was three- thirty in the morning. Much too late to get up and search for Hermione without being stopped by the night-nurse, and much too early to get up an claim you couldn't sleep, I reasoned, and closed my bleary eyes once more, preparing to sleep. I was tired, on a bone-deep level, though my headache receded slightly. There were blisters on my fingers and my hands felt stiff and sore.  
  
Some half hour later, I finally slipped into sleep again, having counted the cracks in the ceiling to distract myself from the remembrance of the nightmares. As oblivion claimed me, the last thought I had was that I was going to go and look for Hermione the first thing in the morning.  
  
''''''''''''''''  
  
Ending Notes: And so he winds up in a hospital again, though it's a real one this time and not the Hogwarts infirmary. I haven't had much practise with writing action-scenes, but I'm pretty satisfied with how this chapter turned out, even if I burned down half of Diagon Alley and blasted away the rest. Thank you for taking the time to read this. 


	3. Closer to the Truth

Hospital stays do not provide for late sleep in the mornings: a Healer came and woke me up at eight o' clock in the morning, chirping happily that I shouldn't be sleeping my day away. I seriously considered throwing my pillow at her, but realised it would only get me more chirping and lecturing, so I sat up, wondering where the closest cup of coffee was located.  
  
"Coffee," I rasped, sounding like a demented zombie.  
  
"No, no, no: you can't have coffee: you've damaged your lungs," the Healers chattered, folding blankets or whatever it was Healers did when not tending to their patients.  
  
"No, I haven't: I'm bloody fine, alright?" I snapped angrily. "But I can't bloody promise you'll be alright unless there's coffee within the next ten minutes."  
  
Looking mildly disapproving, the Healer bustled off and returned seven minutes and thirty seconds later with a steaming cup of coffee. Just to prove that I was fine, I'd gotten up in the mean time and had strapped on the wrist-sheath, shouldered my cloak and was flipping through my books when the door opened. After inhaling the coffee, I ignored her claims that I needed to go back to bed, and headed out the door, searching for someone to point me towards Hermione.  
  
"I believe she's down the corridor, over there. Third door on the left," a helpful Healer told me, smiling, "Go gently though; we've a lot of patients here who need their sleep."  
  
"Thank you." I said, before walking as quickly as I could down the corridor.  
  
My fingers trembled slightly as I prepared to knock on the door. It occurred to me that I didn't even know whether or not she was awake, and hesitated for a moment. What if I woke her up and she was hurt and got angry with me? What if she blamed me for the attacks? I shook myself, annoyed at what I had been thinking: so what if she blamed me, I could always explain what had happened. I only needed to see if she was alright before getting someone to contact Vincent and Frederic to tell them where I was.  
  
I will not say what I'm thinking, I told myself sternly. If I did, I'd be blurting out exactly how I felt about her, and I owed myself a bit more dignity than that. Vowing not to make a fool of myself more than usual, I swallowed my panicked thoughts and knocked decisively on the door.  
  
"Come in," someone answered from the other side.  
  
I opened the door and stuck my head through the crack, just to make sure she knew it was me when I entered. As the door shut behind me, I tried not to stare: she was paler than I thought she'd be, but looking a lot better than she had after the Graphorn attack. With a bandage across her shoulder and a healing scratch running over her cheek, in the middle of a bed that looked much too large, she seemed so small and vulnerable. She smiled at me, and it took all of my restraint not to let all my vows fly right there.  
  
"Oh, it's you. How are you doing?" she asked, trying to sit up straighter.  
  
"Better than you are, it seems," I managed, sitting down uninvited in a vacant chair. "Which brings me to the next logical question: how are you feeling?"  
  
"Just like I felt after being trampled by a Graphorn," she grimaced, "But not as painful. My shoulder hurts, and I think I inhaled some smoke, but other than that, I'm fine."  
  
"Good." I said before I could stop myself, but then I remembered I was allowed to be polite to her now that we had our truce.  
  
"I'm confused about something, though," she spoke up, startling me out of my thoughts.  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"Why did they stop?" she looked troubled. "There were only four of us, and then of them, not counting that redhead-woman, so they outnumbered us. They lit all those fires, but not the green one."  
  
"No, they didn't," I agreed quietly, letting her ramble and wishing she'd come to a conclusion without me in it.  
  
"They didn't light it, but you did," she said, arriving at a conclusion I didn't like at all, since it was correct. "You lit it: I saw you light it, but you didn't say anything.. Your lips didn't move. How?"  
  
In four simple sentences, she had done exactly what I didn't want her to do. She'd realised I'd lit the fire, but also that I'd done so without saying anything. It would be increasingly difficult to get out of this one without arousing her suspicion as well as keeping the lies at a minimum: I'd grown sick of lying, and by the time I was back in school, I prepared to tell my friends about what had really been going on for over a year. Try as I might, I couldn't just blankly lie to Hermione's face, no matter how much I needed to. Opting to tell a much, much slimmed down version of the truth, I cleared my throat.  
  
"I don't know," I said, in complete honesty. "I was just standing there, and I got so angry that something in my head snapped, and I just seemed to know what to do. Now, afterwards, I can't even remember clearly what I did."  
  
And that was, more or less, the truth: I could remember the thin, green line of fire, and the rising flames, but I couldn't remember just how I'd conjured them up. They'd just appeared, and all I'd gotten from the experience were blistered fingers and a slight headache. Hermione stared at me with slight suspicion in the quirk of her eyebrows, but I put on a carefully arranged expression of confused innocence, something I'd become quite good at.  
  
"You can't." it wasn't even a question, it was a statement.  
  
"No. It's the same as with the Graphorn, I'm afraid: I can only remember getting really angry and then things just happened. I think it's a bit like the first magic you ever do," I shrugged, spinning on my amnesia-theory. "Most of the time, it's strong emotions, like anger, fear or pain that makes you preform your first bit of magic. For example, my first magic done on my own was when I fell down from a pear-tree and slashed up my ribcage from my shoulder to my hip when I was five: if I hadn't used some magic to make me fall slower, I'd have been skewered on the sharp pole I fell on instead of just injured. It might have been the same thing, only I now know how to control my magic better."  
  
"I couldn't have put it better myself, Zabini, though I might have skipped some of the gruesome details," an amused and much familiar voice said from the doorway.  
  
"No you wouldn't," I said, turning in my chair and wondering how Vincent had gotten here so quickly. "You would have elaborated on the gruesome details ad nauseum, until she had to vomit. And don't try to deny it."  
  
"That was an almost scholarly explanation," he continued, stepping into the room uninvited. "Where did you learn to do that, I wonder."  
  
"Your endlessly spewed up lectures, where else?" I grumbled. "I had information spilling out of my ears by the end of them: where's Frederic?"  
  
"Chasing female Healers down the halls, pretending to be sick," Vincent sighed and rolled his eyes. "He will never grow up. I got an owl an hour ago, saying you were in St. Mungo's from the Headmaster, but only after I'd searched the house."  
  
"Well, excuse me, but I didn't exactly reckon with the Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley," I snapped, getting annoyed. "I'll send them a note next time, telling them in advance not to bother, should I?"  
  
"You should have listened when I warned you then, though you handled yourself well. Ms Granger, I hope your health will improve before term starts," Vincent said, positively cheerful for being him. "I'm going to have to borrow Zabini now, and I don't think he's coming back, so I apologise in advance. Have a nice day."  
  
He took hold of my arm and dragged me out the room as I tried not to be too shocked at the image of Vincent Lucas, scariest professor this side of Durmstrang, wishing someone a nice day. I kept having visions of Voldemort handing out flowers and wishing it was Valentine's Day. The last thing I saw before Vincent kicked the door closed was Hermione surprised and slightly shocked expression, staring at me just wishing she could ask the questions she wanted.  
  
"You're an idiot, anyone ever tell you that?" I asked as I tried to keep my balance, being dragged down the corridor.  
  
"Once, but they seem to prefer titles such as bastard, scoundrel, evil git and, on one odd occasion, vagabond," he shrugged it off calmly. "What were you doing explaining yourself to Granger? I thought you wanted to keep it a secret."  
  
"You try lying to her and see how well that goes," I protested, shaking him off. "I'm sick of keeping secrets; I'd be surprised if Millie and the others will ever talk to me again when they find out I've been lying to them for over a year."  
  
Vincent stopped and looked at me, with his perfected blank expression. Behind his forehead, I could practically hear the little wheels clicking around faster and faster, weighing pros and cons of something he would undoubtedly tell me about in a moment. I stood there in the hallway, arms crossed and waiting.  
  
"You're going to tell your friends." it wasn't a question.  
  
"Yes. Millie, Draco, Pansy, Agnes and Theo, Gaspar and Cain." I counted on my fingers. "And they know to keep it a secret."  
  
"And you know this."  
  
"Yes. If they even consider telling anyone without my express, preferably written permission, I'm going to turn them inside out." I nodded. "And they're going to need a lot of reds and purples to make their family portraits."  
  
"You were on the verge of telling Granger too. Would she have kept it a secret?" Vincent challenged.  
  
"She's too honourable to tell anyone. Contrary to popular opinion of the Gryffindors, she's not stupid." I shrugged. "She can keep secrets: if she couldn't, Weasley and Potter would have sent me to an early grave right about now."  
  
"As long as you don't shout it out from the roof-tops: you'd be too much of a target." he advised me. "Voldemort seeks out power, and if he doesn't cajole the possessors into joining him, he terminates it."  
  
"Why don't you just say that if he finds out I'll hang?" I muttered as he started down the corridor again. "Would have been easier, taken less words too."  
  
Frederic was found, and the head-Healer in charge of me was bullied into letting me off earlier. And so we went off back to the Lucas' mansion again, some twenty-four hours too late. I'd been given some potions by the Healers, with stern instructions to take them for the next forty-eight hours. I graciously ignored them and dumped the potions in the rubbish-bin as soon as we arrived. The Healers seemed convinced that I was a sick little boy and that I needed constant attention, but the truth was that, aside from my blistered fingers, I was fine.  
  
I settled down on my bed in the room that had been mine for six weeks, staring at the ceiling. It was less than a week left to the start of term. My last year at Hogwarts had crept up on me through a series of pitfalls, accidents and rigorous training. I was almost seventeen, almost grown up in the eyes of the world, and I didn't have the smallest idea what I wanted to do with my life. Though holing up somewhere on Svalbard, well away from everyone else in the world seemed like a good idea.  
  
"Zabini? Mind if I interrupt your introspective moment?" Frederic asked, appearing in the doorway, though without the distinct pop of Apparation.  
  
"Go ahead." I told him.  
  
"I might be coming around Hogwarts during the school-year," he started, seeming a bit hesitant – an unusual state of mind for Frederic. "Now that I know where Vince is at, I get to mock him every once in a while, and I'm going to keep track of how you're doing as well. If that's alright with you."  
  
"It hasn't stopped you before, has it?" I asked, smiling slightly at the memory of the numerous ambushes I'd had to withstand.  
  
"I thought I'd be a proper friend for once and ask," Frederic explained with a shrug. "A no wouldn't have stopped me, but I just figured asking would be more polite."  
  
"It would," I said, sitting up on the bed. "Thanks for asking, and it is alright with me. I'm going to need someone who's perpetually cheerful with all those long faces and grave matters around."  
  
"Perpetually cheerful? You sure you don't mean crazy?" he asked, grinning the same demented grin he always had.  
  
"Depends: are you crazy?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "Because if you are, you should be submitted to St. Mungo's ward for the insane."  
  
"I like to think of myself as moderately cured of sanity," Frederic replied, still grinning, "If that makes any sense. By the way, before I completely ignore it; my brother wonders if you want to go directly to Hogwarts with him, or take the more conventional way."  
  
"I always promised my sister I'd ride the train with her when she started, and she's going to be in her first year this year," I said, staring at the ceiling in thought. "I think I'd like to take the train."  
  
"I'll tell Vince then: expect me to come around sometime in December," he said, practically skipping off again, whistling as he went.  
  
I shook my head and looked the spot he had occupied only moments before. Frederic was truly the most scrambled individual I had ever met: one moment cheerful and grinning like a cat, the next giving advice on how to execute someone with a pair of wire-framed glasses. His mind was like a fractured mirror: I could see myself in it, reflected quite clearly and still resembling myself, and it was a beautiful piece of art in the way it mirrored light, or other people's thoughts, but it was also something that was ultimately broken.  
  
And it was not merely broken: it was scattered all over the landscape. But I felt privileged to have gotten to know him; such insanity had to be rare, and most of the time he had me in stitches, though I knew better than to tell him about it. He would most likely think I meant actual stitches and hand me needle and thread with a blank look on his face. I could hear him now, shouting downstairs for his brother, and Vincent snapping back, irritated as usual.  
  
On the whole, the summer hadn't been too bad. Or it would have been good if it hadn't been ended with a Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley. I shuddered as the memory of that redhead-woman's twisted smile appeared in my mind. I'd seen her three times now, each time before I got in trouble or all hell went down around me, and I still had no idea who she was. Chances were that I'd be called in by the Aurors for questioning, so I might find out who she was if they recognised her, but until then, I resolved to keep her out of my mind.  
  
Since I'd been woken up at such an unholy hour of the morning by the Healers, I was tired, and opted to take a nap to pass the time. There wasn't much time to pass, but it seemed like a good idea.  
  
'''''''''''  
  
Ending Notes: I apologise for the shortness of the chapter, but I didn't want to fill it with dragged on scenes, since I think I owe you more than that. 


	4. For Once, For Now, For Ever

September 1st. The last ride I would ever take on the Hogwarts express. The last year I would ever be at Hogwarts. It was almost enough to make me sentimental.  
  
But this was neither the time nor the place for that: Platform 9 ¾ was filled with people, ranging from age eleven to nearly seventeen, along with worried parents and nervous pets and trunks too big for them. With the help of Vincent, and some so-called helpful comments from Frederic, my belongings had been shrunk and I was carrying them around in an old, left- over bag found in the wardrobe. I could easily carry it over one shoulder, dodging eleven-year-olds dragging trunks bigger than they were.  
  
Speaking of eleven-year-olds, I needed to find my sister. I'd promised her I'd ride the train with her, and I wasn't going to go back on my promise now. The only trouble was finding her in the massive crowd. People bumped into me as I made my way across the platform, looking out over everyone's heads, searching for my sister. I bumped into someone who came running head- long from the entrance, and stumbled back. Curses, muffled due to having a Hogwarts' cloak in their face, spilled like water from the person. To my surprise, I recognised the voice.  
  
"H- what are you running for?" I asked, helping Hermione to stand up straight. It seemed we were always running into each other, either by accident or because Vincent ordered me around. "It's only a quarter to eleven; you've got a lot of time."  
  
"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to run into you, but there's such a crowd and I didn't look where I was going," she hurried to apologise, words stumbling over each other, "My watch stopped working, so I thought it was a lot less time left than it is, and I can't find Harry and Ron."  
  
"We're right here," Weasley snapped from my right, and I froze, acutely aware that I was holding onto Hermione's arms. "And if you're done fraternising with the enemy now, we'd like to talk to you."  
  
My eye twitched at the title bestowed to me. Fraternising with the enemy? Weasley really needed to get better insults: that was what everyone said he'd called Krum in our fourth year. The rumours had been running wild about how Hermione and he had had an almighty fight about Krum, and why Hermione went to the ball with him. It had been rather funny to hear, especially when Draco related the tale, and acted out the parts of Weasley and Hermione quite perfectly.  
  
"Ronald Weasley!" Hermione snapped angrily, "How dare you say something like that?"  
  
"I'll just go look for my sister now, shall I?" I said to the world at large, and slipped away from the impending fight.  
  
I didn't have time to find out whether Hermione had defended herself or me, but my heart beat just little faster. Praying to the higher powers that I wasn't blushing, I began to look for my sister again, mentally beating myself up for even allowing my fancying of Hermione to even survive this long. It was silly, pointless and would only end up with her going off with someone else while I had a date with the pitcher of Pumpkin Juice again.  
  
"Blaise! I've got someone here you might like to meet," Millicent pushed her way through the crowd, dragging my sister along.  
  
"Blaise!" she said, wrapping her arms quite tightly around my middle, "Mama said you wasn't coming home, I missed you."  
  
"I'm not coming home, I've moved out," I said, picking her up easily and hugging her back. "I missed you too, pixie. Excited about Hogwarts?"  
  
"Uh-huh," she nodded so hard her newly-bought hat almost fell off. "That funny man with red eyes took me shopping, when Mama said I couldn't go, and we bought a wand!"  
  
"The funny man with red eyes, eh?" I muttered, wondering what in the world had made Vincent Lucas take my sister school-shopping. "Let's get on the train, pixie; we don't want to miss it."  
  
Marise attached herself to me and refused to let go. She hung onto me even as I attempted to play chess with Theo. Draco, Pansy and Millicent had of course met Marise before, but Theo, Agnes and Cain were new acquaintances, which wasn't something Marise usually took well to. However, she accepted the new people quite readily, perhaps because she was so busy talking about what she'd been doing over the summer, and about what her kitten had gotten up to.  
  
Imagine my surprise when it turned out that not only had Vincent taken her to Diagon Alley: he'd let her buy a cat. She kept referring to it as a kitten, but it was a fully-grown grey cat, with more scars than should be legal. It looked vicious, but it was stretched out in its cage and purring like a thunderstorm. Draco had tried petting it, but after it nearly took his fingers off, we all let it be. Easily, the topic of conversation turned from our summers (which in Millicent's, Pansy's, Draco's and Cain's case had been smashing, but in the case of Theo and Agnes had been dismal) to the usual planning of pranks on Potter, Weasley and Hermione.  
  
"Playing pranks isn't very nice," Marise piped up after a while, looking mildly disapproving.  
  
"No, but we're Slytherins, pixie," I said, smiling, "It's expected of us."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Everyone thinks we're mean, because the Founder of our House wasn't very nice," Cain explained to her with a careless shrug. "After a while, you get tired of proving them wrong, so we might as well prank them: it's what they expect, after all."  
  
Cain seemed to have grasped, without explanations, that Marise wasn't quite up to an eleven-year-old's mental capacity, and had taken it quite calmly. It was difficult to keep from smiling at them, and I kept having visions of letters signed ´Marise Angevine´ in the future. But I didn't say anything, like I would have done a year ago: it seemed petty now.  
  
"That's not very nice of them. If they think you're nasty, you will be." she pointed out with a six-year-old's logic. "Won't you?"  
  
"Exactly," Cain replied, with a Chocolate Frog in his mouth. "Frog?"  
  
Some halfway through the ride, I excused myself to go to the restroom, left Marise chatting with Cain and headed out from our compartment. I didn't really need to go, but I needed some time alone before we reached Hogwarts to figure out how I was going to explain things to them. Marise was simple; she already knew some of it, and would believe everything I told her. Millicent and the others would be more difficult, mainly because I'd been lying to them for over a year, and hadn't communicated with them over summer.  
  
I washed my hands, for no other reason than to drag out on my absence from the compartment, and stared at myself in the mirror for the second time in less than a week. A few more scars had been added to my collection, most noticeably one running across my cheekbone, a thin, white line about an inch and a half long, earned during the attack on Diagon Alley. I was still puzzled about what had made them attack like that, in broad daylight no less. And the identity of the red-headed woman remained a mystery. Finally deciding that the train-ride would not be ideal place to drop the bombshell, I left the restroom and headed back to the compartment.  
  
I spent the rest of the journey playing Exploding Snap with Draco, Pansy and Theo and losing most of the time. Agnes was draped on Theo's shoulder with a dreamy expression on her face, while Millicent curled up on the seat and wrote a letter to Gaspar. I kept up the ignorance of not having written any letters to them over summer, and no one seemed to bother to point it out.  
  
The staff-table was, unusually, filled this year. Snape, who had been missing most of last year, was back, looking like death warmed over. After the initial shock, whispers broke out all over the Great Hall, and more fingers were pointed his way than in any previous year. Sinistra and Vincent were sitting next to each other, and I choked when I remembered that he'd said he'd fancied her for a year and a half. I hoped to high heaven that it had been when he went to school, because any knowledge of the teacher's love lives was disgusting. Then I'd have to imagine they were human, instead of robed menaces out to torture students.  
  
I was so busy trying to block out any thoughts of Vincent and Sinistra in the same sentence that I missed most of the Sorting Song. All I heard was the end of it, which was more confusing than ever.  
  
"The Thinking-Cap has returned  
And within these walls  
You shall much wisdom learn  
You will not leave these halls  
As you have entered them  
But I shall but you in the House  
Where you will be ready when duty calls."  
  
It didn't even rhyme, and didn't make sense in any case. You will not leave these halls as you have entered them? That was obvious: we'd be smarter at the other end, but it had never sounded like this before. It was more like the songs drill-sergeants taught, about honour, duty and dying on the battlefield. The song ended, and the children trooped up to get Sorted, looking just as scared and nervous I remembered being seven years ago.  
  
There were a few Hufflepuffs, and two Gryffindors, with "Mab, Juliana" being the first Ravenclaw, and "Maini, Graham" the first Slytherin. As when I had been Sorted, Marise had to wait until last to put on the Hat. When her name was finally called, she ambled up to the stool and put the Hat on, and I waited, holding my breath. It was almost out of the question for her to become a Slytherin, she was too nice for that, but I hoped she wouldn't end up in Gryffindor.  
  
"Ravenclaw!" The Hat shouted after what felt like an eternity, and I jumped up and cheered together with the Ravenclaw table, whistling loudly.  
  
Draco pulled me down again, looking faintly annoyed.  
  
"Blaise, you're not supposed to cheer when they end up in other Houses," he said when I finally stopped clapping. "It goes against our Code of Honour."  
  
"Who cares? She's in Ravenclaw!" I said, waving my arms wildly. "I'm proud!"  
  
"Why? She's not in Slytherin!" Draco pointed out blankly.  
  
"It really shows that you haven't got any siblings, Draco," I said, turning my attention to the Head Table instead. "If you did, you'd be happy even if they ended up in Ravenclaw."  
  
"Whatever," he muttered.  
  
Dumbledore stood up, made his customary speech about not being allowed in the Forbidden Forest for a reason, (he looked pointedly at Vincent when he spoke) and added that yet another range of Zonko-products had been banned from the hallways by Filch. He finished in the same manner he always did, with some strange words (Mimblewimble! Schlup! Wibble!) like always, and then the food appeared and thought was forcibly removed from from my head.  
  
After I'd satisfied my most acute hunger with some fried potatoes and beef, I leaned back, sipped my Pumpkin Juice and surveyed the Great Hall. Marise was sitting between the Mab girl and Terry Boot, constantly pushing her too- large hat up, and looking quite happy with the state of things. At the Hufflepuff table, Bones was bashing MacMillan over the head with a spoon, while Weasley sported a rather spectacular bruise on his cheek at the Gryffindor table. Aside from Weasley's bruise, everything was exactly like it had been every year so far.  
  
For a fleeting second, I wondered if Hermione had slapped Weasley, like she had done Draco in our third year, but then I shook it off. She might have slapped Potter last year, but that hadn't been hard enough to bruise. I still hadn't found out quite why she'd done that, but no matter. Hermione wasn't one to slap her friends, not unless there were some very unusual circumstances. Like the pig just started flying.  
  
"Stop staring, Blaise, you're going to embarrass yourself," Millicent muttered out of the corner of her mouth and elbowed me sharply.  
  
"What?" I asked, rubbing my ribs where her elbow had dug in, "I wasn't staring: I was looking at the other tables."  
  
"And Granger just happened to be all of the other tables, then?" she sniggered, "You were staring, Blaise, and you know it."  
  
"Silence," I snapped, throwing a peppermint humbug at her. "I was not staring: I was wondering how Weasley came up with that bruise he's got."  
  
Of course I'd been staring: how could I not? With Hermione looking so enraged, her eyes sparkled and her cheeks were pink, and she looked absolutely lovely. It was just that I didn't want to be so obvious about it. Weasley's bruise was proving to be a good excuse for acting silly. I wasn't supposed to be staring at Hermione, even if I did fancy her, but I couldn't stop myself. It was silly, it was stupid, and I was going to stop. Really, I was. It was going to stop right now.  
  
After some additional fidgeting, we were allowed to leave the Great Hall, and made our way down to the Common Room in a rather large group. No Head students had been announced, but they generally weren't: we always had to find out who they were on our own. I had a sneaking suspicion that this year's Head Girl position had been a stiff competition between Ravenclaw and Hermione. Who ended up with the badge was, of course, still to be seen.  
  
"This year's password is Prometheus Bound." Draco announced when we reached the Common Room. "Remember it, because no one around here is nice enough to let you in if you forget it."  
  
"Snape did not pick that password," I mumbled to Millicent.  
  
"Lucas did? Why do you think that?"  
  
"Because Prometheus Bound was a Greek tragedy, and Snape doesn't have enough spare time to read plays," I shrugged, stepping inside the Common Room. "Especially not something written by ancient Greeks."  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"Because I read it this summer, and it really isn't something for Potion's Masters," I replied. "It's longwinded, and all ends up with Prometheus getting his liver hacked out every night by an eagle. Pretty depressing."  
  
"Should suit you then," she laughed and shoved me towards the stairs, "Go get some sleep: you look like you're falling over."  
  
I was, at that: sleep had been a rare commodity over summer, and the last night before leaving, I'd been plagued by nightmares and bouts of insomnia. The mere thought of having to go back to Hogwarts and pretend like nothing was wrong around Hermione made me want to jump off a cliff, and the realisation that my sister, who had a habit of telling people the absolute, unadorned truth at all times was enough to make Vincent nervous, let alone me.  
  
Climbing the stairs to the seventh year boy's dormitory, I realised we no longer had free access to Hogsmeade. For all I cared, they could shut down the entrance; last time I'd gone out that way, Moon had gone missing, kidnapped by Death Eaters, and she was dead. It didn't matter if she was still breathing, could still see the light: in all ways that mattered, she was dead. The Death Eaters had gotten to her, and it had been almost a year ago. If there was still something left behind her forehead, enough to form coherent thoughts, I pitied her.  
  
Conscious torture was worse than blind pain.  
  
Moon had been the first victim of the war, the first one we ever heard of, knew for ourselves, the one that struck too close to home. Snape had been the second, but only for a while. He'd come back, looking grey and dead, but still breathing, alive enough to stand on his own. The war was no longer distant. For me, it was personal, and I knew that the training I'd undergone hadn't been merely to give me the chance to function like a normal human being. By Vincent and Frederic's rule, I'd been transformed into not one, but two people.  
  
One reasonably normal, if slightly crazy, seventeen year old boy. The other a cold, harsh weapon. All summer, I'd known that I was more than just someone to help for Vincent. After all, he'd never been a very helpful person. Keeping that though away from acknowledgement had been tough, but I had managed somehow. But now, back in the real world, there was nothing between me and the seemingly split personality I'd acquired. As soon as something threatening appeared, like the Death Eaters in Diagon Alley, I would slip into a more focused, cold state of mind, where I could easily counter anything they threw at me.  
  
Multiple personality disorder might not have been the best way to get through the war, but it was the only one I had. If it required becoming a cold-blooded killer when people attacked me, I might pose a threat to my fellow students, but I would never be caught unaware. With every gift comes a curse, and the danger I still held was my curse. Shaking off my gloomy thoughts, I looked around in what would be my home for the next year.  
  
The seventh year dormitory was different that any others, in that it was situated so far up the stairs of the Slytherin Common Room that it overlooked the grounds. It even had decent windows. It had an elegance not found in the rest of the dormitories too: a portrait of Phinead Nigellus on the wall, looking severe even while asleep, no dust in the drapes around the beds, the floor was polished and there were no loose floorboards.  
  
It was cleaner than I'd thought it would be, and yet it seemed older than the others. On the bed closest to the door, my name had been written on a small, copper plaque, set on the bed's headboard. Draco had a similar one on his bed, but then I noticed that there were only one more bed in the room, and it went nameless. There wasn't enough beds for the four of us, and only Draco and I had gotten name-tags on our beds. Peculiar. Crabbe and Goyle had nowhere to sleep.  
  
Shrugging at the curious arrangement, I walked back to my own bed and started to undress. I was probably going to oversleep in the morning, but at the moment, the bed looked so tempting that I couldn't stop myself. My shirt joined my robes on the floor closely followed by trousers and socks, and I collapsed on the bed, pulling the covers up so I wouldn't freeze, and closed my eyes.  
  
It felt like coming home.  
  
Ending Notes: A bit of a short chapter, but I hope to move the plot along somewhat in the next chapter. 


	5. Overdue Explanations

A sound, resembling a cross-breed between a thunderstorm and a boiling cauldron, woke me up the next morning. The weight on my chest alerted me that something was wrong, and I opened my eyes. A pair of eyes, one yellow and intrinsically evil, the other the milky white of blindness, stared back at me. I choked at first, tensing to strike out, before I realised that it wasn't one of Frederic's new tricks to test me, and that it wasn't someone trying to kill me.  
  
It was Marise's cat.  
  
With a caffeine headache clouding my judgement, I sat up abruptly. Instead of dislodging the cat, the move made the evil creature slide its claws out and attach them to my chest. My eyes filled with tears of pain, and I had to grit my teeth not to scream: it bloody hurt, those claws. The cat favoured me with a good look at its impressive range of sharp teeth, yawning before resuming its purr.  
  
"You," I told it seriously, "are evil."  
  
"Stop talking to the cat, Blaise, it's not going to answer," Draco mumbled from where he was lying, face down in his pillow. "Shut up, please, I'm trying to sleep."  
  
"I'm going to the hospital wing," I said, ignoring his request. "Shove off, cat."  
  
It turned up the volume of its purr, but after a few painful attempts, finally decided to go back to terrorizing Marise, and I was let out of my bed. After some additional searching, I located my trousers and a shirt, which hadn't been washed in a while, and put them on. I chose not to use my cleaner shirts, since I was bleeding a little, and didn't want bloodstains on my clothing.  
  
Most of the castle was deserted, but since it was a Sunday, (odd day for the first day of school, but it wasn't like I was protesting) and still quite early in the morning, that wasn't such an odd occurrence. Madam Pomfrey would most likely not be up at this hour of the morning, but I could help myself to some bandages, unless she'd got some healing potions stashed up, as long as I left a note. That was the good thing about getting patched up so many times: Pomfrey immediately assumed that I was truly hurt and needed the supplies, so she wouldn't protest if I walked out of there with all her spare bandages.  
  
As I'd thought, the infirmary was deserted: the door to Pomfrey's office was open, and I could hear snores coming from inside. They sounded decidedly like male snoring, but I could have been wrong. Suppressing a snort, I just picked up the nearest roll of bandages, after pushing the door shut to save her some embarrassment, and unbuttoned my shirt.  
  
I'd read in a Muggle Studies book (which I'd snitched from a Ravenclaw when I was twelve) about Muggle medical-practises, and remembered the little sticky cloth-pieces that stuck to skin, of which I couldn't for the life of me recall the name of, and wondered quietly why the magical world hadn't come up with such an ingenious thing. Of course, we had potions and spells, but when potions and spells were needed elsewhere, Muggle medical aids would be handy.  
  
"Madam Pomfrey?" a horribly familiar voice called, as the door slid open, "Are you th - "  
  
The voice turned into a shocked squeak, and I turned around slowly, willing myself not to blush. I would not turn red at the sight of Hermione, even if I wasn't presently wearing a shirt. And even if I looked like a bloody bean- pole. With shoulders. And a particularly untamed thatch of hair.  
  
"´Lo, nice morning, isn't it?" I said, trying to ignore the fact that Hermione was slowly going red and staring at me as if I was a monster. "You hurt?"  
  
"N-no," she stammered, obviously trying not to stare at me, but failing spectacularly. "Where's Madam Pomfrey?"  
  
"Sleeping," I shrugged. "Did you need anything?"  
  
"Yeah." she blushed even harder, and mumbled something I didn't quite catch.  
  
"What was that?" I asked, finishing bandaging myself up and shrugging on my shirt again, though I didn't bother to button it up. There was no point, really: there was no part of my chest that Hermione hadn't just seen.  
  
"Pain-relief Potion," she mumbled, though a bit louder this time.  
  
"But you just said you weren't hurt." I said blankly.  
  
"I'm not," she glared at me. "I just happen to need it, that's all."  
  
It took an amazing feat of thinking in my caffeine-deprived mind to put two and two together and not come up with anything else than four. When I did come up with four, however, I decided that this was the most awkward moment of my year so far. I considered commenting, as to not seem too out of character, but then I remembered how Millicent and Pansy acted during their periods, and decided not to.  
  
"Right," I mumbled. "Isn't this awkward. I'm sure the potion is in here somewhere though: Pomfrey keeps quite a tight order on her things."  
  
"We can't just take it!" she protested. "That's stealing!"  
  
"I'm aware that it is, technically, stealing," I said, picking the potion up from one of the shelves, "And I'm aware that you think it's immoral. All Gryffindors do. But look at it this way: it's me stealing."  
  
"How's that better?" Hermione asked, snatching the potion up nonetheless.  
  
"It's not." I shrugged. "But I'll take the blame if it comes to that. Not that it will: Pomfrey would let me walk out of here with all of her potions in my pockets if I wanted to."  
  
"Why?" she asked, staring for the door.  
  
"Because I get in trouble so often, and need to be patched up so often that she'd just assumed I needed them," I said, following her.  
  
"You're peculiar, anyone ever tell you that?" she asked me, raising an eyebrow.  
  
"All the time," I sighed. "All the time."  
  
Talking to Hermione wasn't nearly as awkward as I'd thought it would be. When ignoring the fact that I was acting like a silly little first-year on Valentine's Day, it went reasonably well. I wasn't usually this civil to anyone, let alone Hermione, but there was something different now. I'd noticed it when I first returned on the Express: planning pranks on the Gryffindors, while fun, no longer held the same excitement. Disappointed, I decided it was time to realise I'd grown up: petty rivalries just weren't as fun any more.  
  
'''''''''''''''  
  
I returned to the Common Room to find that Millicent was sitting in one of the armchairs, and that Theo's couch didn't look as if it had been slept in. If I hadn't been feeling so downcast, I would have been smirking. Millicent looked up and greeted me with a smile, which turned into a frown when she saw my expression.  
  
"You look like someone died, Blaise. What's wrong?" she asked.  
  
"No one's died, but now that you mention it, Father's death-day was last week, and I missed it," I said gloomily, sitting down in the second armchair. "I just realised mocking the Gryffindors isn't as fun any more."  
  
"What happened, did you grow up?" Millicent chuckled.  
  
"Yes, I did," I replied with frank honesty, "and don't chuckle, Millie: it's not as fun as it looks."  
  
"Well, you'll just have to suffer, won't you?" Millicent replied acerbically, and I raised my eyebrow. "It happens to everyone eventually."  
  
"I know; I'm a boy, Millie, that isn't synonymous with stupid," I rolled my eyes. "I just didn't expect it to happen quite yet."  
  
The entrance flew open, and in walked Snape, interrupting our chat which was quickly turning into a friendly spat. In his black robes, he looked like a vision of Death, minus the scythe, though he did look marginally better than he had during the Welcoming Feast the night before. There were dark rings under his eyes, and he was even paler than usual, almost as pale as Vincent was on a good day, but he looked as surly as ever. He stopped when he spotted Millicent and I, and I tried to look as innocent as I could while wearing a bloodstained shirt. His gaze flickered to the empty couch and then back to us.  
  
"Where is Nott?" he asked, raising his eyebrow. I blinked: even his voice sounded dead.  
  
"Don't know," I shrugged. "Not on the couch is the most helpful remark I can come up with."  
  
"Thank you," Snape replied with a very tight smile. "Nott has spent the last five years on that couch; what has made him stop, I wonder."  
  
"Agnes?" Millicent piped up innocently, then promptly started laughing. I could help by join her.  
  
"What, may I ask, is so amusing?" Snape asked quietly, stopping out laughter.  
  
There were few things I considered frightening in the world: magical breakdowns, an angry Dumbledore, an angry Vincent, Frederic's glasses, and Snape's quiet enquiries had long been part of that list.  
  
"Theo and Agnes," I explained cryptically. "I don't think he has nightmares any more, sir, though it might be a while before he wakes up. Do you need Millicent to get him?"  
  
Both of Snape's eyebrows rose into his greasy hairline, but then he returned to the same expression he always worse: somewhere between distaste and malice, and turned on his heels. Having been a student at Hogwarts himself at one point in time, he knew all too well what I was implying. Millicent and I waited until he was out of the Common Room to laugh ourselves silly.  
  
I might have been forced to grow up, but I wasn't about to stop poking fun at people.  
  
''''''''''''  
  
It was the first school day, but a Sunday, so there were no lessons. Despite the lack of lessons, Millicent, Draco, Pansy and I spent most of the day (after I'd changed into some clean clothing and we'd had some breakfast, of course) going through our course-books. The Potions-book was an inch and a half thick, and Draco kept complaining about how difficult his year would be.  
  
"Be happy you're not fighting the bloody war!" I snapped, throwing my quill at him after a while, before returning to my Arithmancy book. "Now shut up: I want some reading done so Vector doesn't make mince-meat of me the first lesson."  
  
"Why didn't you study over summer?" Millicent asked from the floor, where she was busy trying to read both her Charms and Transfiguration books at once.  
  
"Because I didn't get the list in time; it was more than a week late, and when I went to pick the books up, Death Eaters attacked Diagon Alley," I said, wincing at the memory. "I have the worst timing in the history of man."  
  
"You were there?" Draco looked up, "That made the Daily Prophet it did, even if Fudge doesn't want anyone to know: they said it was a Muggle terrorist attack. No wonder you looked like shit when you came back!"  
  
"Thanks, Draco. But how could Fudge think people would believe that?" I asked, putting down my book once more, "Muggles can't even see the Leaky Cauldron! Who made him Minister for Magic?"  
  
"The Ministry," Pansy shrugged, "They handle all those things internally."  
  
"No wonder they screw it up so badly," I rolled my eyes, "You should see the Department of Mysteries: they haven't had a proper Department Head in months."  
  
"How do you know?" Cain, who was playing gobstones with Theo and Agnes, piped up. "The Unspeakables never talk to anyone."  
  
This was my perfect opportunity. I had said to Vincent that I would tell my friends: we were alone in the Common Room, since Tracy Davies and Daphne Greengrass weren't revising, and those who were had retreated to the library. Crabbe and Goyle had, finally, not managed to scrape enough points on the exams to be allowed into the seventh year: perhaps it was because they hadn't had Snape to favour them in their sixth year. It was now or never.  
  
"Oh, they tend to whine a lot, once they've stopped chasing their biting teapot." I said, marking my place in the book before putting it down. "Chronic complaints seems to be the Unspeakable's modus operandi, though that's not saying a lot, since one of them tends to speak with faked speech impediments, one is also a chronic chain-smoker, and one wakes up every day and takes ten minutes to recognise that fellow in the mirror."  
  
The expressions on my friends' faces could only be described as acutely curious. Clearing my throat, I settled in comfortably, waiting for the bombarding of questions that would inevitably come.  
  
"Everyone's thinking it, so I suppose I'll say it," Pansy drawled, something she'd learned from Draco, "How?"  
  
"It's a long story. You have the rest of the day cleared?" I asked, feeling slightly uncomfortable. It was a big revelation, what I was going to say, more than I had told anyone ever before. Though I had come close to blurting out my secrets to Hermione. And she was smart: for a split second, I worried she might figure it out, but then filed it under Things to Worry About Tomorrow.  
  
"For you?" Theo smirked, "We've got all week, boyo."  
  
"First, what I'm going to tell you does not go beyond this room, or I'm going to steal Potter's glasses and kill you," I said seriously, not realising that using glasses to kill anyone sounded ridiculous to anyone who hadn't met Frederic Lucas. "There's a reason to why I haven't told you this, why I've kept this secret even from you for almost a year now. Understood?"  
  
They nodded, suddenly serious in the face of my cold sobriety. If there was one thing I'd learned, it was how to get someone's attention: a summer with two of the largest personalities in the magical world had taught me that I needed to make space for myself to be heard.  
  
"Good. Vincent has allowed me to tell you, but only if you keep the secret. If it does get out, I'll know who to blame." I stopped as Millicent raised her hand to interrupt me. "What?"  
  
"Who's Vincent?"  
  
"Vincent? Don't you – well, of course you don't, I'm being stupid again: Vincent Lucas." I explained quickly.  
  
"Lucas? How come you call him Vincent?" Agnes protested.  
  
"I'll get to that," I rolled my eyes, "Now shut up, or we'll be here all night. Remember how depressed I was at the beginning of last year?" They nodded again, "Father had just died, my house had burned down, and Mother and Marise and I were living in a little box with a door, so I had good reasons. But because of that, I couldn't sleep properly, I didn't bother to eat regularly, and spent most of my time snapping at people."  
  
"I've been trying to repress those memories," Draco mumbled to Pansy.  
  
"We had a duelling class with Vincent back then, and I duelled Potter, as you all will surely remember." I went on, ignoring Draco's interruption, "And he's strong. He's so strong he frightens even me. Promise me something Draco: never duel him. Ever. Even if he insults your mother: he strong, and I don't want to search the castle for enough pieces of you to bury. He would kill you, Draco, without even meaning to."  
  
"How come you're still standing then?" Draco sneered.  
  
"Because I'm stronger than you are," I said, ignoring the disbelief on his face, "And because he didn't pull out all the stops, like he would have with you. He's locked wands with Voldemort and came out alive: there's a damn good reason for that. But even if I am nearly as strong as he is, as far as I can tell, I didn't come out of that duel unscathed. I depleted my magical reserves to almost nil."  
  
After my so-called praising of Potter, they seemed to realise something truly big had happened, and gathered closer, leaning forward and fixing me with interested stares.  
  
"Thankfully, I rested up a bit afterwards, but not nearly enough, and got through about a month, living on my reserves. Let me tell you, the headache that gave me wasn't pretty: I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy." I winced, remembering the pain. "Migraine isn't half of it. Then, I had my fight with Weasley, and ended up in the hospital wing."  
  
"I remember that," Agnes piped up, "I was so furious with him."  
  
"Ever wonder why I was there twice in two days? No? I'm disappointed. I had a nervous breakdown, or that's at least what I thought it was," I continued, intentionally looking smug that they hadn't realised it. "Vincent had The Talk with me, explaining the punishment Weasley was not receiving and why, and I just snapped. Things started flying, glass shattered and I ended up curled up on the floor, trying to pull glass shards out of my face. Not pleasant, as you might imagine."  
  
"Nervous breakdown?" Millicent asked, "Why?"  
  
"Because Weasley escaping detention and any other kind of punishment made me so angry that I snapped: living on my reserves for weeks was a bad idea, as it turned out." I felt a but uneasy again; I was almost there now, "My magic went wild on me. I lost control and it felt like being back where I started when I was five: with no wand and to tangible hold on my magic. We were all like that at one time, but I didn't exactly expect it to happen again at sixteen."  
  
I was getting a bit hoarse; I hadn't talked this much in years. I wasn't in the habit of making speeches, and Frederic certainly made a better storyteller than I did. That's the price of being anti-social.  
  
"Vincent claimed he knew what had happened and dragged me off to London. I haven't seen any lawyers, and I haven't been on any inquiries about Father's death: that was me doing what we like to refer to as lying. I went with Vincent to the Department of Mysteries." I said, watching their expressions closely.  
  
Millicent nodded as if she'd known it all along, as did Agnes, Theo, Cain and Pansy. Draco, however, just looked betrayed, as if I'd just revealed that I put his father in prison. Draco could be so childish sometimes. He took everything to personally. Sighing, I kept on talking.  
  
"I didn't meet Anja in the cafeteria: she's a chain-smoking Unspeakable with a love of sarcasm. I can't tell you any more than that about who works at the Department of Mysteries, or what it looks like, since they'd kill me if I did," I rattled off in a rather monotone voice. "There, I found out that I wasn't wrong, that I really was crazy. I've got a little piece of paper that says I am now. They took one look inside my head and announced that I might as well throw my wand away: I wouldn't need it any more."  
  
"Why not?" Pansy asked, "Everyone needs a wand, unless they're Squibs. And you're not."  
  
Giving her a tired look, I waved my hand towards the cold fireplace, which had been left unlit because of the heat outside.  
  
"Incendio." I said, in an off-handed manner, and the flames sprung to life again. "My wand is still in my trunk upstairs."  
  
I only had one word for their expressions: comical. Millicent stared at the roaring fire as if it was about to attack her, Pansy's jaw had dropped, Draco was white in what could have been terror, Cain's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his scull, Theo had jumped a mile high, and Agnes had her wand in her hand, staring at me as if I was a criminal madman.  
  
"There's something about fire; whenever I get really angry, or really afraid, things seem to start burning. I wonder why?" I said, grinning as widely as I could. This was a lot easier than I had thought it would be. "Now, could you please stop staring at me?"  
  
Silence.  
  
Crickets chirping would have been a vast improvement.  
  
"Guys? Are you alright?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"Vincent is going to kill me for damaging your minds."  
  
''''''''''''''''  
  
Ending Notes: And so I reduce Slytherin's finest to dumbness. That was not the original plan, I assure you. 


	6. Broken Minds

The door to the staff-room was jerked open by an annoyed McGonagall at my frantic knocking. She had an ink-blotch on her cheek and her glasses were askew; a pack of what looked like lesson-plans were squeezed under her arm. I looked past her, over her shoulder and into the room, searching for Vincent. I found him sitting in the armchair in front of the fire, nose deep in a book.  
  
"Vincent! Help!" I said, incoherently, "I think they're broken!"  
  
"I am curious as to why you let your students address you by first name," McGonagall said, looking faintly disapproving.  
  
"I am more curious as to what is broken, actually," Vincent said, easily avoiding the answer to her unspoken question.  
  
"I am curious as to why he talks to you instead of me," Snape said, looking up from his own lesson plans.  
  
"It doesn't matter!" I snapped, "They're broken!"  
  
"Who are you referring to?" Vincent asked.  
  
"Millie, Draco, Pansy; everyone! They're broken!" I was quickly becoming panicked.  
  
I could almost see the little wheels clicking around in Vincent's mind, as he quickly worked out what I was talking about. He dropped his book and joined me in the hallway, starting towards our Common Room, ignoring the indignant enquiries from Snape behind our backs. As Vincent half-walked, half-ran down to the dungeons, I tried to keep up and explain at the same time. '  
  
"You told them? You've been here less than twenty-four hours, Zabini." Vincent sighed, obviously annoyed with me.  
  
"They gave me a perfect opening," I protested, "It isn't as if it's something I can just put in a conversation, in between asking for Millie to pass me that salt, now is it?"  
  
"Nevertheless, it was irresponsible." he said, then added; "And stupid."  
  
"Do you want me to slap you?" I enquired tersely, "I did the best I could."  
  
"You know my opinion about telling anyone, much less several people," Vincent was trying not to snap; I could tell. "The more people aware, - "  
  
"The bigger the target I am," I finished wearily. "I know, I know, but I'm not like you. I can't exactly keep my distance from it: I'm in the middle. You might be able to keep out of it, but I can't. It's impossible: and you know I'm sick of keeping secrets."  
  
"Sometimes, keeping secrets is the only thing you can do," Vincent shrugged, not looking at me. "You should know that, being a Slytherin. But I can understand; sharing trouble eases it, for a moment. However, if you're not careful, Granger will find out as well, and she will tell Potter and Weasley, and they won't be able to keep their mouths shut."  
  
"I'll knock down that bridge when I come to it." I sighed. "She's not one to go talking about other people secrets."  
  
Neither was I. In our third year, I'd suspected something was wrong with her; she turned up in lessons a minute later than everyone else, but no one saw her come in. After a week or two, I started watching her, trying to find out how she did it, and most importantly, what it was she did. Once, I saw her vanish right in front of my eyes, and since it was impossible to Apparate on Hogwarts' grounds, she must have done something else. Later that year, I saw her outside the castle, watching herself. No one could be in two places at once; it was an impossibility. After some research, I'd narrowed it down to that either I was hallucinating, or she was using a Time-Turner.  
  
Even when I made sure she had a Time-Turner, I didn't enlighten anyone about it. It wasn't my secret to tell. I was quite sure she would keep my secret, if she figured it out.  
  
''''''''''''''''  
  
They were all where I had left them, though when we entered, they looked up as one and stared at me. Millicent seemed to have returned more or less to normal, though she still looked slightly shocked, as had Theo and Agnes, but Cain stared at me as if I had two heads, and Pansy was shaking her head constantly, Draco stared at the roaring fire with his jaw around his knees.  
  
"And so the triumphant returns," Millicent said by way of greeting. "You might want to give us some time to get used to the idea of your specialised insanity before dumping something like that on us again, Blaise."  
  
"And how would you have liked me to put it?" I asked, acidly. "´Pass the salt, Millie, and oh, by the way, I do magic without a wand´?"  
  
"The term is ´mage´, Zabini," Vincent informed me. "Remember it. I assume you're handling yourself, Ms Bulstrode?"  
  
"I've been Blaise's sounding-board for years," Millicent rolled her eyes, "Few things he has to tell me actually surprise me any more. The fire was a bit of a shock, but now, I wonder why i haven't seen it earlier. He's been acting like a nervous wreck for a year, and he didn't return our owls over summer."  
  
"Alright. Mr Nott? Ms Lestrange?"  
  
"Fine," Agnes said, "Angry that he's been keeping secrets, understanding the reasons, but fine."  
  
"Same here," Theo echoed, though he was holding onto Agnes' hand quite tightly.  
  
"Mr Malfoy, Ms Parkinson, Mr Angevine," Vincent turned to the three remaining people in the room. "It seems you're not taking this at all well."  
  
"H-he frightened me," Cain confessed. "Is he dangerous?"  
  
"Immensely, but you're in no more danger now than you were last year. In fact," Vincent looked amused, "you were in more danger then than you are now. Zabini had a habit of losing control every now and then last year. That won't happen this year, at least not as often."  
  
I tried to look as harmless as I could, and Draco seemed to relax a bit. Pansy, to her credit, was stronger than she looked, and seemed to be coming to terms with my revelation. I hadn't meant to shock them so much, but a whole summer at the Lucas residence had made me used to expressing my wandless magic without restraint, and so I had just acted from habit. Again. It was becoming painfully obvious how much I had changed over the summer.  
  
"There's some things you won't be able to do around me any more," I piped up when they began to calm down. "Sneaking up on me is not a good idea: I'll most likely attack you. You can blame Frederic for that. I am fully capable of hurting you severely."  
  
"Frederic?" Draco piped up, dazed. "Who's Frederic?"  
  
"No one important," I shrugged. "A maniac with a specialised case of multiple personality disorder."  
  
"I have to impress on you the importance of secrecy," Vincent said, ignoring the implied insult towards his brother. "Zabini's talents must be kept a secret, at any cost. I don't care of eager you are to tell everyone about how powerful Slytherins can be, this will be kept under wraps. No one must know. If someone asks you point blank, lie. Make up a story, I know you can lie convincingly – and while we're at it, Professor Snape does not know either, so this is strictly confidential. I have confidence in you, that you can keep quiet. If you don't, I'll let Frederic loose on you. With his glasses."  
  
The threat left them staring at him blankly. To anyone who had met Frederic and heard his tales about his bloodthirsty glasses would have known what a serious threat Vincent had just made, but my friends just sat there, until Millicent cleared her throat.  
  
"It is against school rules for a teacher to threaten students," she pointed out.  
  
"Have five points for intimate knowledge of the school rulebook, Bulstrode." Vincent said, looking perfectly blank. "It will come in very handy some day, I'm sure."  
  
And then he just turned and walked out of the Common Room. I was used to Vincent and his off-handed threats, his sharp comments and acid humour, but my friends weren't, and they broke out in chatter as soon as the entrance shut behind him. I crossed my arms and listened to them with half and ear, not really paying attention to what they were saying.  
  
"Completely crazy....."  
  
"....Threatening students....."  
  
"....Bloody mad...."  
  
"......not our Head of House....."  
  
"Yes he was," I broke in, hearing the last strain of the conversation. "Last year, after Snape went missing, and Sinistra refused, he was our Head. Don't know if he still is though."  
  
"He seems to tell you everything," Draco bit out acidly.  
  
"On the contrary," I snorted, ignoring his tone of voice. "He never tells me anything. He orders me around, he explains the things most necessary, but he never actually tells me anything. For all I know, his real name could be Francis, and he could be living in Ouagadogou with his three aunts, conspiring to take over the world. The only thing I've ever heard him say about his past before the day he arrived at Hogwarts was that he went to school with Snape and Sinistra. He's as close-mouthed as you can get before you become a hermit on Svalbard."  
  
"Who's Frederic?" Theo asked suddenly.  
  
"A maniac with multiple personality disorder," I said, "I told you. He once killed someone with his glasses."  
  
"His glasses?" Draco squeaked.  
  
"Yeah. He's harmless most of the time, though. If you consider excessive quoting of Muggle pop-culture, and cheerful insanity harmless." I shrugged, sitting back in the armchair. "The scariest part is, that now that Vincent's got his hair cut off, they look so much alike they could be taken for twins. Freaked me out at first."  
  
"They related?" Theo again.  
  
"Brothers." I nodded. "But don't let anyone know: Vincent's a bit ashamed of him, to tell the truth."  
  
"I hate keeping secrets," Cain said miserably.  
  
"It's time you learned then," I told him. "No heroes among Slytherins, remember?"  
  
"And no honour among thieves," he grinned. "I remember."  
  
"Good. And Cain, while we're all having a heart-to-heart, there's something you've got to know about Marise." I said, watching him frown. "She might be eleven, but mentally, she's six years old. She will always be six years old. Act carefully around her. I want you to do something for me this year, and the rest of her time here at Hogwarts."  
  
"What's that?" he leaned forward.  
  
"Look out for her. Make sure she has friends, even outside Ravenclaw, even if it's only you." I said seriously. "Protect her: she won't understand the rivalries between the Houses, and she'll believe that everyone should be nice to her if she's nice to them."  
  
Cain nodded quickly, no longer looking so scared. I relaxed: now I no longer needed to worry quite as much about my sister any more. Having someone to look after her, someone closer to her own age, would give me some free time, while at the same time not neglecting her. It felt so good to finally tell someone my secrets, as well. Having to keep secrets from the people I trusted the most had been the hardest thing I'd ever done.  
  
Now at least, they wouldn't be confused if I came back from class one day looking like I'd seen a ghost.  
  
'''''''''''  
  
The rest of the Slytherins, Tracy Davies especially, gave us some strange looks when they came back from wherever they had been. It could, of course, had been because I was trying to explain blood spells to Millicent, in graphic detail. It was rather grisly details too, but I threw her a glance, and she hurried up the steps to the girls' dormitory.  
  
"There any trouble staying in the same dorm as Davies?" I asked, nodding my head towards the stairs.  
  
"Nah," Millicent shook her head. "She's always been a bit of a brat, so we're used to it. At least I am; I've got to put up with both her and Pansy. She's got a nasty mind though, and I'm not sure what she'll get up to this year."  
  
"Your mind is nastier, Millie, a lot nastier," I chuckled, "Trust me on that one. Davies wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of coming up with some of the tricks you've pulled."  
  
"I don't have a nasty mind," she protested feebly.  
  
"Oh no?" I asked, "Then who was it that came up with the plan to sacrifice a squirrel to find out whether blood spells work or not, just five minutes ago?"  
  
"Alright, that might have been a little nasty," she laughed, "But you've got to admit that the blood spell sound impossible, at least to us. But speaking of dormitory arrangements, you and Draco must have it pretty cosy now, since Crabbe and Goyle got held back a year."  
  
"Finally. Without Snape to favour them, I suppose they just couldn't scrape by any more." I said gleefully: Crabbe and Goyle had, from the initial beatings they'd given me to the grating stupidity they exhibited, never been my favourite people.  
  
"Should we mock them?" there was an impish smile on Millicent's face.  
  
"Nah; they wouldn't understand what we were doing, that takes all the fun out of it," I sighed dramatically. "Aside from Davies then, everything is peaceful on this front. I wonder how Potter plans to put himself in lethal danger this year. It'd be a shame to break such a wonderful record."  
  
"He didn't do much last year," she reminded me.  
  
"Aside from skulking around like a ghost and whistling ´God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs´ in May, that is," I said. "Just because we didn't see anything doesn't mean he didn't do anything. But my point it, this is our last, and his last, year at Hogwarts, and more or less his last chance to have a shot at his arch-nemesis. Logic states that it's do or die this year: either he becomes everyone's favourite golden boy for the rest of his life, or we're leaving sleazy notes on his grave this time next fall."  
  
"How 'bout a bet?" Millicent suggested. "We put some money on what we believe will happen, and whoever wins get the money."  
  
"I'm putting ten galleons on the Dark Lord," Draco piped up suddenly. "Potter will be dead before graduation."  
  
"Five says that they both die," Agnes said, turning away from Theo for a moment.  
  
"Three Sickles on Potter," Theo said, "But he gets gruesomely hurt."  
  
"He always does, Theo, he always does," Millicent grumbled, "I'm putting ten galleons on Potter in this one; what about you Blaise?"  
  
"Twenty says he wins, but he'll have Weasley and H-Granger with him." I said, stumbling slightly over Hermione's last name; I'd become so used to thinking it in the privacy of my own mind over the summer that it felt odd to refer to her by her last name. "There's no way he'll pull it off by himself: he's too clumsy and disgustingly heroic."  
  
"Cain? You betting?" Millicent asked.  
  
"I say Potter doesn't fight at all," Cain replied. "Five Sickles says Dumbledore kills the Dark Lord."  
  
"He did off Grindelwald," I said, "Might have been a fluke, but there's a chance."  
  
"I'm keeping track of bets," Millicent decided. "I'm not trusting you with it, Pansy: you'll mix it up with your Herbology notes."  
  
Pansy stuck out her tongue at the insult, but didn't protest. I had to keep from chuckling: Millicent was correct in her prediction, since Pansy was the notoriously worst organised person in the Slytherin dormitories. She was compulsively sloppy, and her class-notes were so disorganised that it was embarrassing. Good thing she'd chosen to take Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, Ancient Runes and Divination, since only one of those classes required an orderly mind. Divination had been Draco and Pansy's choice since it meant they'd only have to turn up and lie their way through the exams to earn a passing grade: even the Divination-N.E.W.T was boringly simple.  
  
"At least I don't doodle Gaspar's name over all my notes," Pansy shot back, and Millicent's face turned red.  
  
"I don't!" Millicent snapped. "I've been writing letters!"  
  
"Girls, don't argue," Draco interrupted. "Please."  
  
"Save your energy to plot the downfall of Davies instead," I suggested, grinning.  
  
The grins on theirs' and Agnes' face were positively evil. If Davies survived the term, she'd be deserving of a medal of honour. She'd never been particularly popular in our side of the House, though most of the others seemed to have made her their unofficial leader. It was sad, really, seeing how they always looked to someone to lead them, and turned their backs on everyone else.  
  
'''''''''  
  
Ending Notes: And there goes another chapter. I'm trying to move the plot along, since I have so many things to take care of: budding relationships, in-House and inter-House rivalries, Auror-questionings, the war and re- introductions to social life for Blaise. 


End file.
